This artist’s impression compares the seven planets orbiting the ultra-cool red dwarf star TRAPPIST-1 to the Earth at the same scale. New observations, when combined with very sophisticated analysis, have now yielded good estimates of the densities of all seven of the Earth-sized planets and suggest that they are rich in volatile materials, probably water. They are shown to the same scale but not in the correct relative positions. Photo credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser.

One of the advanced polar research vessels scientists can gain access to via ARICE is the RRS Sir David Attenborough. The new polar ship is commissioned by NERC, built by Cammell Laird to a Rolls-Royce design and operated by British Antarctic Survey. From 2019 onwards scientists researching oceans, ice and atmosphere will have access to state-of-the-art facilities on this floating multidisciplinary research platform. Photo credit: Rolls-Royce.

Latest Regulation News

Microplastics were present in all 13 samples taken from Scapa Flow in Orkney, off the northeastern coast of Scotland, despite its remoteness and Orkney’s small population. In fact, the samples had similar microplastic levels to some of the UK’s most industrialized waterways. Photo credit: Heriot-Watt University.

The Northern Gulf of Mexico Bryde’s whale is the only year-round resident baleen whale in the northern Gulf of Mexico. They are found primarily off Florida, in an area known as De Soto Canyon. Map courtesy of the Marine Mammal Commission, an Independent Agency of the U.S. Government (map adapted from LaBrecque et al. 2015).

Preliminary rendering shows the exterior of Mote Science Education Aquarium. This new facility, being planned for mainland Sarasota County, will be an iconic, four-story building unique to southwest Florida, where wonder and learning will begin even before visitors step inside. Renderings provided by CambridgeSeven and are subject to change.

MaRINET2 provides free access to a network of offshore renewable testing facilities, such as this testing basin for wave and offshore wind devices at the Lir National Ocean Test Facility, which operates within the MaREI Centre at University College Cork in Ireland.

Another Greensea system is entering the market – this time with the versatile, long duration, Exocetus Coastal Glider. Greensea is providing their commercially available navigation, control, and automation product based on their patent-pending OPENSEATM operating platform – the first operating platform for the marine industry – for the command and control of the Exocetus vehicle and sensors.

Exocetus says that their AUV carries more payload and is faster than competing gliders. They also report that it operates well in changing salinity conditions common along the coast. “But the main differentiator for users is its open architecture design and ease-of-use,” said Joe Turner, co-founder.

“The open approach is applied across the system to sensors, hardware, and software. This provides a tremendous advantage for research applications,” said Andy Roberts, Project Manager. For example, researchers can even put their own computer in the payload bay. Performance and other data are on a network available to the user for correlation to sensed data – especially helpful in acoustic work. "The open approach is important for researchers who may find better instruments or change the direction of their research,” continued Turner. “Our main objective with choosing the Greensea system is that it will give us the ability to add or change out scientific sensors without requiring a trip back to the lab to reconfigure hardware and software. Changing out sensors used to be a big deal, but Greensea makes it easy due to their native support for thousands of sensors,” said Joe Turner, Co-Founder, Exocetus Autonomous Systems.

“Ease of use is built into the entire design,” explained Roberts. “For example, ballasting is straightforward and forgiving. There is no need for a tank or measuring shots of weight within grams. Glider preparation is also less complicated compared to others including the graphical user interface (Greensea Workspace) for navigation and mission planning.”.